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Roosevelt takes the oath in the Wilcox library, as an artist imagined it for the Nashville News, October 13, 1901. No photographs were allowed.
On the afternoon of September 14, 1901, in the library of a friend's house on Delaware Avenue in Buffalo, New York, Theodore Roosevelt raised his right hand and became the 26th President of the United States, in borrowed clothes. William McKinley had died of an assassin's bullets that morning. The house is now Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site, and the presidency Roosevelt started there looked very different from the one he inherited.
National Park Service.
Eight days in September
| Date, 1901 | |
|---|---|
| September 5 | McKinley speaks at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo on cooperation among the nations of the Americas |
| September 6 | at a reception in the Temple of Music, Leon Czolgosz, an anarchist with a gun hidden in a bandage on his right hand, shoots McKinley twice in the stomach |
| that afternoon | surgeons operate in the Exposition's first-aid station, lit by mirrors reflecting the sun and a single electric bulb, without masks or gloves; they find one bullet, not the second, and decline to use an X-ray machine sent by Thomas Edison |
| September 7 | Vice President Roosevelt, told the news while speaking in Vermont, arrives in Buffalo and stays with his friend Ansley Wilcox, a lawyer he had known since they worked with Governor Grover Cleveland |
| September 10 | with McKinley apparently recovering, Roosevelt leaves to show the public his confidence, joining his family in the Adirondacks |
| September 13 | returning from a climb of Mount Marcy, New York's highest peak, Roosevelt sees a runner and knows at once it is bad news: McKinley is dying. A six-hour carriage ride through the night takes him 35 miles to the train at North Creek |
| September 14, 2:15 a.m. | McKinley dies. At dawn, boarding a special train, Roosevelt hears |
| September 14, afternoon | after nearly twelve hours without a president, Roosevelt reaches Buffalo, calls on Mrs. McKinley, and takes the oath at the Wilcox house |
The oath
Roosevelt wanted it quiet and private, and away from the Milburn house where McKinley's body lay. The guests were the Wilcoxes, the Cabinet, officials in town, McKinley's doctors and the Exposition's officers; a few reporters were let in at the last minute to take notes. Roosevelt banned photographs, fearing a circus. Federal District Judge John R. Hazel gave the oath, in a borrowed frock coat, trousers, waistcoat, tie and patent-leather shoes.
Just before, Roosevelt told the room he would "continue absolutely unbroken the policy of President McKinley for the peace, the prosperity and the honor of our beloved country". Afterwards, in Wilcox's study, he drafted his first proclamation — naming September 19, the day of McKinley's funeral, a national day of mourning and prayer. He threw the heavily corrected first draft away; Wilcox fished it out of the wastebasket and kept it.
Wilcox wrote later that it takes less ceremony to make a president than to make a king, "but the significance of the event is no less great".
Not a caretaker
Roosevelt had spent his career as a reformer — in the New York Assembly in the 1880s and as governor from 1898 to 1900, where he pushed businesses on pay and conditions. New York's party bosses got him nominated for vice president in 1900 partly to get him out of Albany, over the objections of Republicans who feared exactly this outcome.
National Park Service.
- The coal strike, 1902. When the United Mine Workers struck for better pay, shorter hours and recognition, the owners asked for the Army to break the strike, as governments had before. Roosevelt threatened to send the Army to run the mines unless the owners negotiated. It was the first time a president had taken the workers' side, and the strike ended in compromise.
- The Panama Canal. Roosevelt dealt with Panamanians seeking independence from Colombia rather than with Colombia itself; construction began in 1904 and the canal opened in 1914.
- Peace. In 1905 he brought Russia and Japan to the table to end their war, and in 1906 became the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
- The bully pulpit. He used the presidency to argue for education and work for all Americans, and for children's welfare; his public stands helped launch later reforms of child labour and women's and civil rights, most of which he did not live to see.
Elected in his own right in 1904, he declined to run in 1908, ran again in 1912 for the Progressive "Bull Moose" party and lost to Woodrow Wilson, and died in 1919 at sixty.
The house
(Photo by Dick Frear, National Park Service)
Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, in 1873. National Park Service.
| 1839 | built as the commanding officer's and surgeon's quarters of an Army barracks on Buffalo's northern edge, amid tensions with Britain and rebellion in Upper Canada |
| 1840s | the Army leaves; the house is sold |
| 1884 | Ansley Wilcox and his family move in, and turn two front parlours into the large library |
| early 1930s | the Wilcoxes leave; a memorial fund fails and the house becomes a restaurant |
| 1960s | saved from demolition when Liberty Bank buys it in exchange for building a branch on the old garden |
| 1970–71 | restored and made a national historic site; opened September 14, 1971, seventy years to the day after the oath |
The Wilcox house on inauguration day, hung with a flag and black mourning bunting. National Park Service.
The library, restored to its 1901 appearance. Dick Frear, National Park Service.
Buffalo in 1901 was the "Queen City of the Lakes" — the western end of the Erie Canal, a rail, steamship and trolley hub, and, twenty miles from Niagara Falls, electrified ten years ahead of most American cities. That is why it hosted the Exposition, and why a president was there to be shot.
Visiting
The site, at 641 Delaware Avenue, is run by the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site Foundation under a cooperative agreement with the National Park Service.
Sources
Written from "Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural Site: Birthplace of the Modern Presidency", a Teaching with Historic Places lesson by Ann Marie Brogan-Linnabery for the National Park Service. Quotations are from the Buffalo Courier, September 15, 1901, and Ansley Wilcox, "Theodore Roosevelt, President" (1901). Pictures an earlier version of this page left out were restored on 2026-09-26.
Licens: CC0 1.0 (offentligt eje) · Bearbejdet efter www.nps.gov
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